Food produced and sold Ontario can now be labelled “local” after people complained that Canadian Food Inspection Agency rules were outdated.

Food produced and sold in Ontario now qualifies as “local,” thanks to updated rules from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which critics say was following outdated policies.

The federal agency’s original policy said food was only “local” if it was sold 50 kilometres from where it was produced or in the neighbouring municipality. This meant produce like blueberries from Thunder Bay wouldn’t qualify as local if sold in Toronto.

“When you use the term ‘local,’ people actually do think of their province and they think of the incredible diversity of products that are produced regionally across the province,” said Lauren Baker, co-ordinator of the Toronto Food Policy Council. “The switch in definition is about government language catching up to the way the public thinks about local.”

His business serves locally sourced, healthy lunches to kids in Toronto. He was forced to remove the word “local” from all his marketing materials, replacing it instead with “Ontario” or the city of production.

“From my perspective local is Ontario,” said Farnell. “I celebrate the decision and commend the (agency) on doing what government should do, which is take a look inward and see if they have anachronistic legislation still on the books.”

The change is effective immediately as interim policy while the agency carries out a complete review of its labelling standards.

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